The Economic Causes And Impacts Of The Chernobyl Disaster

First, as mentioned above, failure to mention reactors design flaws led to distrust in the infrastructure of the Soviet Union. While many scientists and researchers such as Valeri Legasov had noticed that there were issues with the reactors design prior to the disaster, and mentioned so in personal journals, the discovery of their failure to speak up lead to the questioning of Soviet leadership [5]. Additionally, these issues became worse upon the discovery of KGB classified documents that discussed various issues with the construction of the Chernobyl plant between 1971 and 1988 [7]. These compounding issues identified flaws

The disaster had more of an effect on eastern Europe’s nuclear experimentation and use but “While no-one in the West was under any illusion about the safety of early Soviet reactor designs, some lessons learned have also been applicable to Western plants” (World Nuclear Association). Since the Chernobyl disaster was majorly caused by human error and under qualified scientists, to work with nuclear reactors today you need to be insanely qualified. Since the accident, Soviet-designed reactors’ safety has improved greatly, even in smaller ways. Automatic shutdown mechanisms now work faster, and other safety mechanisms have been sped up. Even new equipment has been installed such as automated inspection equipment. Several scientist and reporters have even said an accident like Chernobyl is virtually impossible with today’s technology (World Nuclear Association).

The morning of April 26, 1986 started just like all other mornings in Chernobyl, with just one exception, there was an emergency systems test underway at the near-by nuclear power station. This test was unauthorized, none the less, it was designed to ensure cooling water for the reactor could still be controlled with little or no power to the station. The cold war was in full swing, and Russia was still poised to go to war with the United States at any moment. It was due to this “distrust” that the test was being run that morning. The head nuclear scientist on shift, Anatoli Dyatlov, was from the “old school” and thought that he alone could control the whole reactor process, and he also thought he knew more

On Saturday, 26 April 1986 a reactor at the Chernobyl Power Plant near Pripyat, Russia has a sudden power surge which caused mass damage. The Power Plant tried for immediate

Junot Diaz once said “Disasters don’t just happen. They are always made possible by a series of often-invisible societal choices that implicate more than just those being drowned or buried in rubble” (Junot Diaz, 1). This quote introduces the idea of what is referred to as a social disaster. A social disaster can be a natural disaster such as earthquakes, tsunamis, or hurricanes etc. that are associated with some environmental, cultural, or political problem (Hovenac, 1). These societal problems can be a result of the natural disaster but more often issues that have always been there that are uncovered by the event of the natural disaster. When we look back at natural disasters that have occurred in United States, we notice that societal issues also arise with these events. A known example of this is when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States in 2005. As a result of the storm, researchers claimed that the socioeconomic status of those affected by the storm played a vital role in the damages that they face. This natural disaster brought attention to the pressing issue of the socioeconomic imbalance in our country and how it affects those in a natural disaster.

Many individuals in the country are struggling to make ends meet on a good day, so what happens when disaster strikes? They are unprepared, have a harder time recovering, and their risk and devastation are increased in the disaster. Class inequality impacts individuals on the lower end of the scale. They have less access to resources to prepare themselves before the disaster strikes, and after disaster strikes they have even less resources to recover with. Lower class individuals are also at a higher risk of devastation during a disaster because they cannot always escape before the disaster hits or have the potential to live in areas that are less likely to be affected.

According to the World Health Organization in 2002, vulnerability is defined as “the degree to which a population, individual or organization is unable to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impacts of disasters (WHO.,2002). When discussing vulnerable populations, assessing reasons that may have placed these individuals under this category is vital in determining ways to increase their quality of life. The Center for Disease Control: Office of Minority Health & Health Equity (OMHHE) expounds upon this thought process of how certain qualities can cause one to become vulnerable by giving insight to different characteristics that may cause one to be considered vulnerable such as, “socio-economic status, geography, gender, age, disability

(MP1) What Chernobyl plant represented in 1980s and who is responsible for such a massive disaster

The Soviet Union, after World War II, had begun building many facilities for nuclear reprocessing using many radioactive components. The Russian government, being behind in the nuclear era, decided they needed to move quickly and start producing a sustainable nuclear chain reaction with secrecy. One of these facilities they built was so discreet it wasn't on any official maps at that time. In the town of Ozyorsk, Russia they built the Mayak nuclear fuel processing complex. This particular accident has been titled and associated with Kryshtym because that was the closest town on an official map that they could categorize it with. They built this complex between 1945 and 1948 to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Since they had to move fast at building this complex, as well as poor understanding or little education of nuclear safety, and major disregards for human wellness, the systems were poorly built. They used what is called an open cycle cooling system, in which they pumped the water back and forth into their water source. Their main water source was Lake Karachay, as well as the Tech River. All 6 reactors that the Mayak nuclear complex had used the open cycle cooling system. They used huge lids weighing 160 tons for the tops of these radioactive components and systems, and even had them buried 8.2 meters (27 feet) under ground. With these cooling systems being built with the eager notion to be ahead in the nuclear era, they weren't prepared for any kind of error. If

* These 2 critical errors (withdrawing the rods and slowing the reaction too rapidly) made the engineers incapable of increasing the power within the reactor.

There have been lots of nuclear accident around the world. One of the accident that had a major impact on the world was the Chernobyl disaster. The disaster took place on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. The disaster was caused by a reaction explosion induced by design faults and staff application errors. The accident took place in the course of scheduled tests to check the power supply mode in the event of external sources loss. Even after 10 days, explosions and ejections of radioactive substances continued. The release of radiation and radioactive substance polluted the places within 30 km of Chernobyl, and those areas have been closed for a long period of

Early in the morning of April 27, 1986, the world experienced its largest nuclear disaster ever (Gould 40). While violating safety protocol during a test, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl power plant was placed in a severely unstable state, and in a matter of seconds the reactor output shot up to 120 times the rated output (Flavin 8). The resulting steam explosion tossed aside the reactor’s 1,000 ton concrete covering and released radioactive particles up to one and a half miles into the sky (Gould 38). The explosion and resulting fires caused 31 immediate deaths and over a thousand injuries, including radiation poisoning (Flavin 5). After the

The Chernobyl accident was a disastrous nuclear event that happened on 26th April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. The Chernobyl disaster is classified as a level 7 event according to the International Nuclear Event Scale (only two events have been classified this high in the past) and has caused damages that consist of the cost of 500,000 workers and 18 billion rubles, 31 deaths according to the Soviet casualty count (this is still being disputed) and between 4000-27000 affected future deaths due to radiation exposure [G1].

The main reason for the mishap is by now well recognized (Petryna 1). However, initially the Chernobyl catastrophe baffled the minds of people in the 20th century and definitely left the people of Ukraine disordered while living in anxiety. Now, without question, the public knows that the accident at Chernobyl was the result of a disastrous combination of ignorance from the Ukrainians and complacency from the Soviets in control of Ukraine at the time. As according to American physicist and Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, “…the Chernobyl disaster tells us about the deficiencies of the Soviet political and administrative system rather than about problems with nuclear power." The immediate basis of the Chernobyl accident was a mismanaged electrical-engineering experiment (Rhodes "Chernobyl", PBS). While, the indirect source of the calamity was an industrial malfunction of a Soviet made nuclear-based machine. Ironically, the Chernobyl accident occurred during a test run, which was conducted to improve plant safety. This accident proved once more what experienced control engineers have all learned: that a process must be understood before it can be controlled. (Liptak “Control Global”). Engineers with no familiarity of reactor physics were interested to see if they could draw electricity from the turbine generator of the Number 4 reactor unit to run water pumps during an emergency, when the turbine was no longer being driven by the reactor but was

The disaster took place on April 1986, and was caused by inexperienced staff. When the power plant had to undergo a special test, to make sure that sufficient amount of cooling water would be supplied to the reactor in case of a power outage. However, the test had been delayed, because the national grid required the power output more than the expected time. Hence, the test was postponed after midnight where the night shift had to come. The night shift had little experience about such a test as most of them were electrical engineers rather than nuclear. On the other hand, the night shift had to perform the test before the grid needed the power again, otherwise they would have all been fined or fired. Consequently, lead to an unnecessary pressure on the personnel, which in turn increased the probability of making incorrect